


Master and Apprentice

by Ningikuga



Series: Brothers of Blood and Magic [2]
Category: Atop the Fourth Wall, That Guy with the Glasses/Channel Awesome
Genre: Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5318342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ningikuga/pseuds/Ningikuga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oancitizen arrives at Linkara's apartment for his first face-to-face magic lesson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Master and Apprentice

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [By the Blood of My Brother Kept Safe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3959989).
> 
> This work is intended to depict characters/personae, not real people, and no implications about the people who write and play those characters are intended or should be inferred.

“Hey, sorry, I’ve been running thirty minutes behind all day,” Linkara said into the cell phone tucked uneasily between his ear and his shoulder. He set a large brass candlestick down on the coffee table and caught the phone before it slipped. “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” sighed the voice on the other end of the connection. “It just seems a bit strange to be using advanced technology for a magic lesson.”

“Really?” Linkara shrugged. “I don’t see it that way, I’ll admit. Make sure you’ve got everything you’re bringing with you actually touching you. It should either be in contact with bare skin, or you should be supporting more than half its weight.”

“I got everything in one backpack,” the phone replied; it then pinged loudly in Linkara’s ear. “Those are my current GPS coordinates.”

“Great!” Linkara turned to the sensor on the ceiling and held the phone up to the tiny camera. “Nimue, teleport the individual at these coordinates directly to the apartment.”

“Confirmed,” the ship’s voice answered, and the teleportation effect flashed in the doorway to the kitchen. Oancitizen promptly dropped the notebook he was holding and stumbled over the edge of the carpet; Linkara stifled a laugh.

Oancitizen retrieved the notebook, closed it, and glanced around, setting an overstuffed backpack on the floor and straightening his jacket. “Nice place,” he commented. “Very airy, cozy without feeling cramped.”

“And the lighting’s much better than my old place,” Linkara agreed. He tilted his head slightly and smiled. “Anything else?”

Oancitizen looked puzzled for half a second, then caught Linkara’s meaning, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Several layers of wards,” he said slowly, “and another standing spell I don’t recognize. It’s not a ward, but it’s definitely a protection spell of some sort.”

“It prevents magic or superscience from damaging the structure of the apartment itself,” Linkara explained. “I figured I should try not to be the worst neighbor in the world.” He lightly patted Oancitizen on the shoulder. “Good job; I’m not sure I would have been able to pick those out as separate spells without actually touching the wall, even now.”

Oan glanced away, studying the few bare spots on the walls. “It didn’t occur to me that that would be permitted,” he mumbled.

Linkara opened his mouth, then looked puzzled and closed it again. “Don’t worry about ‘permitted’ for trivial stuff,” he finally said. “I mean, lots worse things have happened in here than getting a few fingerprints on the paint.” He studied Oancitizen’s face for a moment. “You’re having second thoughts about this, aren’t you?”

Oancitizen exhaled sharply and sank onto the only clear spot on the couch. “Not second thoughts, exactly,” he explained. “If we - if I’m going to be performing magic, not just researching it, then I need to learn how. There’s a part of me that’s always wanted to be able to do more than just vaguely sense the - the energies - no, agh, there isn’t even a correct word for that in English, is there?”

“I just call it magic,” Linkara said, shrugging and stepping around the half-disassembled cybermat on the floor. “Yeah, it comes in different flavors, but it’s all just magic in the end.” He scooped up the pile of trade compilations from the other end of the sofa and set them on the shelf next to Vyce’s helmet. “But something’s seriously bugging you,” he continued as he sat down, “and I’m guessing it’s not just disorientation from the teleporter.”

Fidgeting with the straps of his backpack, Oancitizen stared out of the spaces between the blinds on the window for a long moment. “I don’t like performing tasks in front of other people until I’m competent at them,” he finally said, still not looking at Linkara.

“What?” Linkara blinked at him, uncomprehending. “How do you learn how to do anything new, then?”

“By practicing while I’m alone until I’m at least decent,” Oan replied. “Being able to film myself and then watch it helps, too. So does being able to edit out things that don’t work, although obviously that’s not universally applicable.” He finally turned to face more or less in Linkara’s direction. “But this - despite years of research, I don’t even know how to start. And you taught yourself magic from a book, alone, didn’t you?”

“More or less,” Linkara agreed. “But if I could have found a teacher, I would have.” He leaned in and lowered his voice slightly. “I think I’d be a lot better at it, honestly,” he confessed. “My repertoire isn’t very big; I’m just pretty handy with the spells I do know.”

Oancitizen’s fingers drummed on the arm of the couch. “Still, you’re the only magus I can even ask,” he mumbled.

“Technically, it was Nostalgia Chick who asked,” Linkara reminded him.

“Even more technically, she didn’t so much ask it as order it, for both of us,” Oancitizen countered. “And so did Hagan, at least on my end. Actually, she might be a magus, too; I’ve never been exactly clear on that. But asking her might be even more hazardous to my health, and she was mostly just agreeing with the Chick when it came up.”

“Better not make either of them mad, then,” Linkara chuckled. “Okay, so here’s the first thing that was in my grimoire: lighting a candle using magic.” He leaned forward and set a long white taper into the brass candlestick on the coffee table, then sat up straight, fixed his gaze on the wick, and snapped his fingers. The wick blossomed into bright yellow flame.

Oancitizen shifted uncomfortably. “No incantation?” he asked.

Linkara smiled, cocked his head slightly, and snapped his fingers again; the flame disappeared, and a thin trail of blue smoke rose towards the ceiling. “Sorry, I was showing off,” he admitted. “There is one; it’s _Agnikalo_ \- but once you have the spell down, you don’t need to say it, just think it loud enough. It’s _Dimitagni_ to put it out again.”

Oancitizen’s nose wrinkled. “That’s the worst mishmash of Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin I’ve ever heard,” he complained.

“Yeah,” Linkara shrugged, “that’s just what incantations are like. Most of the ones in the grimoire are really just bad Church Latin with other ancient languages thrown in at random. But they’re really not critical to the spell most of the time.” He gestured towards the candle. “You try it.”

Oancitizen frowned as he turned his gaze to the smoldering wick. “What exactly am I supposed to do?”

Linkara blinked. “Um, well, you focus on the wick and sort of visualize it lighting, really hard, then you snap your fingers and direct your magic to the candle while saying the incantation,” he said, sounding less sure of himself. “Wow, I really hadn’t broken it down like that for myself before.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Oancitizen said quietly.

Linkara waved at the candle. “Go ahead and try it,” he encouraged him, “and I’ll try and correct you if it doesn’t work.”

Fifteen minutes later, Oancitizen was massaging the fingers of his right hand with his left, sweat was pouring down his face, and the candle remained stubbornly unlit. His cheeks were red, and he looked like he was refraining from crying by willpower alone.

Linkara looked just as flustered, although at least there was no danger of tears. “No, no, it’s okay,” he reassured his pupil, “it’s - maybe I should have picked something easier for the first face-to-face lesson.”

Oan mopped his brow with a wrinkled handkerchief. “Can you tell what I’m doing wrong?” he asked, his voice trembling slightly.

“Sort of,” Linkara answered. “Your focus isn’t tight enough; I can feel you directing the magic at it, and it’s the right kind, but it’s not coming together correctly.” He rubbed his palms on his pants legs and glanced at the clock. “But I don’t know what to tell you to do to fix it, except keep trying, and you look like you’re exhausted, or at least need a break.”

“I don’t -” Oancitizen started, then slumped onto the arm of the couch. “Maybe you’re right. I think I could use a glass of water.”

“Oh, sure. Glasses are in the cabinet over the stove,” Linkara said with artificial cheerfulness. “Help yourself.” 

As Oancitizen heaved himself to his feet and shuffled into the kitchen, Linkara peered sharply at the candle and snapped his fingers. It lit instantly. He snapped them again, and it went out just as suddenly. “Huh,” he whispered.

“There’s no need to show off when I can’t see it,” Oancitizen said heavily. Ice clinked into a glass, followed by the splash of the faucet.

“There’s a cold water dispenser on the refrigerator,” Linkara called back. “And I wasn’t trying to show off; I was trying to watch what I was doing when I did it, so I could try to explain it better.” He paused, watching the smoke rise upwards. “Did you feel that from all the way in there?”

“I noticed that something was happening,” Oancitizen explained, coming around the corner with a tumbler clutched in his hands. “Mostly I could smell the hot wax.” His knuckles were white on the glass.

Linkara followed the last wisp of smoke with his eyes; his nose wrinkled. “I’m getting the feeling that I’m not doing a good job teaching this,” he admitted. “I don’t think it’s just you.”

“Does it matter?” Oancitizen sighed, easing himself back onto the couch without setting the glass down. “I still can’t manage a spell so simple you can do it without even paying attention, that you taught yourself from a book, with no prior research or training.”

“Maybe I should let you read the grimoire,” Linkara mused. “Except I think it’s on Comicron-1 at the moment; I had to re-enchant some of the ship’s magic deflectors.”

Oancitizen shook his head. “I don’t want to put you out,” he protested weakly.

“It’s not a bother at all -” Linkara started; he was interrupted by a blaring alarm. He leaped to his feet. “Nimue!” he barked, “What’s the situation!”

“Information: Engine 3 has failed due to internal damage,” the speaker on the ceiling announced. “The source of the damage is currently unknown. An unidentified object is moving inside the engine housing under its own power; scanners indicate that it is not a life-form.”

“Get Pollo and Linksano down there!” Linkara ordered. “Nimue, teleport me directly to Engineering in twenty seconds.”

“Confirmed,” the speaker replied.

Linkara turned to Oancitizen. “Um, I gotta go see what’s wrong -”

“Take your time,” Oancitizen replied. “Do you want me to wait here, or should I see about getting a bus home?”

“No, no, I’ll be right back,” Linkara reassured him as he grabbed his overcoat. The teleportation effect flashed, and he was gone.

Oancitizen stared balefully at the candle as he gulped the rest of the water. His hand shaking slightly, he raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.

Nothing happened. He sighed, set down the glass, retrieved his notebook, and opened the backpack on the floor.

\---

“So, what have we learned from this little adventure?” Linkara asked the abashed scientist in front of him.

“That I shouldn’t repair the cybermats using recycled parts from Lord Vyce’s shades,” Linksano whined. “Can I get back to Engineering now? Getting power back online to the engines is a two-person job, even if one of them is a robot.” He flexed his fingers. “It’s a hands-on kind of thing, and he still doesn’t have any.”

Linkara ran one hand down his face. “Go ahead,” he answered, “but remember that I want a full report on my desk before the end of the day.”

“Of course.” Linksano scuttled back through the door and out of sight.

Linkara waited. When the alarm failed to go off again, he tucked the leather-bound book under his arm and glanced towards the nearest access panel. “Nimue, send me back to the apartment. Oan was pretty exhausted when I left, so drop me in the study - I don’t want to startle him, or wake him up if he decided to take a nap.”

“Acknowledged,” the ship replied. Space twisted and flickered, and suddenly Linkara was standing in front of the futon. The room was dark; had he left the lights off? Something smelled strange, too - hot wax, which was probably a good sign, and something decidedly incense-y, which was (at a minimum) unexpected.

Linkara pushed the door of the study open gently. A soft haze of incense smoke, redolent of sandalwood and some heavy, unidentifiable floral note, drifted past, along with Oancitizen’s round tenor, chanting rolling, melismatic syllables that Linkara couldn’t parse into words.

He kicked off his shoes and tiptoed around the corner. The coffee table had been pushed into the center of the living room, and the various piles of comics and robot parts had been carefully relocated to the periphery. Four brightly colored jar candles in yellow, red, blue, and green flickered in the cardinal corners of the living room, while four white tealights did the same on the corners of the table. A glass of water, a saucer of salt, a small brass incense burner, an open leather-bound notebook, and a very simple wand - a stick sanded smooth and rounded at the tips, really - sat on the table between them, with the large brass candlestick in the center. Oan was wearing a different robe than the monk-like one he’d had before; this one was a Renaissance Faire sort of affair in midnight forest green, so deep it was almost black in the dim light, open down the front and trimmed in silver.

Linkara stared, fascinated, as Oancitizen paced slowly around the table, tracing symbols and sigils in the air with a short, double-edged knife, still chanting softly. Some of it didn’t sound like words at all, but Linkara caught the phrases “ _inflamma ignis_ ” and “ _ignere lucernam_ ” as Oan drew a series of upward-pointing triangles. The arthouse reviewer’s face was calm, his eyes slightly unfocused, as if he were gazing inward.

The entire room was practically seething with magic, all of it neatly and perfectly contained within the boundary set by the four colored candles. Linkara hadn’t been able to feel it from the study at all; he could still only vaguely _feel_ that something was there - but he could _see_ it quite well from where he stood, ripples and waves like heat mirages dancing and swirling around the rough rectangle of the room.

Oan finished the last of the triangles, spun in place, and let out three wordless notes on an open vowel, rising in volume and pitch; on the last one, he brought up the knife and pointed it at the taper’s blackened wick. The magic swimming around the room collapsed in on him like a black hole, disappearing in an instant and reappearing in a flare at the tip of the knife that was visible even without Linkara’s magic senses.

The candle incandesced with a foot-long blaze, melting off nearly an inch of wax in a fraction of a second, then settled into a flame of a more reasonable size.

“You did it!” Linkara cheered, grinning like a maniac.

Oancitizen’s eyes re-focused. He didn’t seem surprised at Linkara’s presence, but he obviously hadn’t seen where he was before. “Hardly,” he mumbled.

“Of course you did! I just saw you!” Linkara looked puzzled.

“Not as a simple act of thaumaturgy,” Oan argued. “I had to design a complete ritual, prepare the supplies and tools - I’m sorry about the saucer, I’ll wash it in a minute - write a set of chants and compose a tune, and then spend ten minutes lighting eight candles by hand and prancing around the room, all just to light one candle by magic.”

“Who cares?” Linkara shrugged, spreading his hands wide. “So you took longer than I do. You still did it!”

“It’s completely different!” Oancitizen roared, color rising in his cheeks. “My approach is absolutely useless as a practical matter! You, you could light torches from a distance upon entering an abandoned castle, or, or surprise a date with instant romantic candlelight. What you do is _useful_ ; it’s an improvement on a pack of piano bar matches, at least. This?” He waved his arms wildly, encompassing the table and everything on it. “This is utterly impractical, a profound waste of time and energy better used in flicking a lighter!”

“I’m not worried about the practical aspects yet,” Linkara protested. “Right now we’re just trying to get you used to summoning and directing magic at all.”

“It’s humiliating, is what it is!” Oan continued shouting. “Do you know how many years I’ve spent studying the theory of thaumaturgy and theurgy? How many dusty tomes I’ve pried from libraries’ historical collections, looking for authentic grimoires and magical codices?”

“Um, no, but I imagine it’s more than a few,” Linkara said cautiously.

“It’s well into the dozens,” Oancitizen growled. “Oh, this is a secondary passion, no rival to high-art cinema as my primary field of study, but it’s one I’ve pursued since I first earned my library card. And _you_ ,” he snarled, his voice rising again, “this all comes perfectly naturally to you, without any intellectual effort. You ordered a grimoire off of Etsy and inherited a magical artifact of cosmic significance without even going _searching_ for it.”

“Hey, hey,” Linkara protested, “I think Margaret was looking for me, not the other way around.”

“Exactly!” Oancitizen shouted. “Why you? Not that you’re intellectually lazy, but you display a fundamental incuriousness about all this, like it’s no big deal! As if being a magus is just something you naturally expect from the universe!”

Linkara’s jaw dropped. “You’re jealous,” he realized.

“Envious, technically,” Oan corrected. “Jealous would mean I wanted to take it away from you.” For a moment, his face fell; his eyes traced the grain of the carpet. “I just - I’ve put so much time and effort into the research, and even now that I’ve had my third eye forcibly opened for me, it’s all still tantalizingly beyond my reach.” His shoulders sagged. “Why should you be the master, and I only the lowly apprentice?”

Linkara took a step forward, reaching towards Oancitizen, then stopped himself. “I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled. “I mean, I didn’t know you felt that strongly about it. I can’t exactly apologize for being who I am.”

Oancitizen’s eyes locked on Linkara’s. “No, of course not,” he hissed. “You’re your perfect, world-saving, heroic self through no fault or significant effort of your own.” He drew himself back to his full height, throwing back his shoulders and raising his chin. “After all, who could ever blame you for just happening to own a powerful magic weapon and a spaceship at the same time? It’s not like you asked for either of those.”

“No,” Linkara shouted back, “I didn’t! Like I said, I was given the magic gun - she chose me, not the other way around! And I got the ship because its previous owner tried to _kill_ me!”

“Exactly!” Oancitizen gestured broadly. “All of this, good and bad and simply bizarre, just drops itself into your lap, to enjoy or to deal with, while the rest of us lead our boring, utterly normal, mundane little lives. What makes you so special, then, that even after you accidentally gift me with some trivial part of your own power, it takes a room full of candles and incense and chanting and sigils for me to light one flame, while you can manage the trick just like _that_?” Oan snapped his fingers on the last word, his hand outstretched across the table towards Linkara.

The candle went out.

Both men blinked at the trail of smoke, rising upward and twining with the steady stream from the incense burner. Slowly, Linkara raised his eyes from the blackened wick to Oancitizen’s face.

Oan stared back. “Did you do that?” he asked.

Linkara slowly shook his head. A grin crept across his face. “Try it again,” he urged.

“ _Agnikalo_ ,” Oancitizen whispered, and clicked his fingers again. The candle obediently leapt into flame.

Linkara snapped his fingers, and the candle went out. “Try it without the incantation, both ways,” he suggested.

Oancitizen focused intently on the wick and snapped the fingers of both hands. It sprang to light. He stared at it as if he were trying to bore a hole through it, and snapped again. It extinguished itself. _*click*_ Lit. _*click*_ Out.

“There you go!” Linkara beamed at him. “You’ve got it! You just had to do it once your way, to get the feel of it.”

Oan turned slowly around the room, snapping his fingers as each of the eight other candles went out. “Perhaps,” he said slowly. “Linkara, I’m - I’m sorry about what I said. I know perfectly well you never asked for the weight of the world to be on your shoulders.”

“My life is a little weird,” Linkara agreed. “It wouldn’t be reasonable for me to expect everyone to just ignore that. Oan, I didn’t realize how much you cared about this before.”

“It was an adolescent fascination that never went away,” Oancitizen admitted. “Magic is part and parcel of art and poetry; it’s in Shakespeare, in Shelley, in Blake, in Yeats, in all the greatest wordsmiths of the English language.” He sank onto the couch; suddenly, he looked exhausted again. “And - perhaps I just wanted to feel powerful, for once. In control of something, instead of buffeted by the wildest whims of minds far more creative than my own.”

“It’s really not all it’s cracked up to be,” Linkara said, joining him on the sofa. “The biggest thing having a little bit of power teaches you is that there are still things _way_ more powerful than you out there.”

“No, intellectually, I fully comprehend that,” Oancitizen agreed. “The tastes I’ve gotten of your adventures, and the Critic’s, and Hagan’s, are full of perils I’m not the least bit ready for yet.” He sighed, his chest rising and falling with the exhalation. “But it’s difficult to translate that intellectual understanding into an emotional one.”

Linkara’s expression grew serious. “I should warn you,” he said, “once you start actually doing magic, those sorts of dangers tend to just start showing up. Or, at least, that’s how it worked for me. I think something out there, or maybe just the universe, notices it, and it starts challenging you.”

“I know that, too,” Oancitizen assured him. “It’s in the literature, as it were. But with your assistance, I hope to be ready for them.”

“And I don’t think you ended up with part of my magic,” Linkara said, as part of Oan’s earlier rant sank in. “I think it just woke up the magic you already had, maybe strengthened your connection to it. I’m pretty sure I’m not missing any.”

“Really?” Oan mused. He stared at the candle again and clicked his fingers; it flared and then settled into a gently wavering flame.

“Really,” Linkara said, smiling. “Tell you what, are you hungry yet? I didn’t get lunch; I’m starving.”

“I could eat,” Oancitizen said, as if he were just realizing the fact.

“How about we order a pizza, then I let you flip through the grimoire and decide what the next lesson should be,” Linkara suggested.

“An excellent plan,” Oan replied, leaning back against the couch cushions as he watched the candle flame dance.


End file.
